Nowadays, wearable electronic devices become more popular. In particular, this relates to spectacles combined with one or two displays located in front of a user's eyes. Despite predictions of an optimistic future of such devices, they have certain limitations due to large equipment providing a display operation. When such equipment is entirely positioned on a spectacle frame, it is not possible to provide enough capacity to its power source, especially when two displays are used. Even if only one display is used, the spectacle frame is still massive and inconvenient when wearing it; in addition, it changes appearance of the user. When such equipment is positioned beyond the spectacle frame, a wire connecting two parts of the electronic device must be provided. The wire hanging from the user's head tends to tangle, limits rotation of the head, and worsens appearance; if extra wire length for enabling the head rotation is not controlled, the wire may get caught on neighboring objects.
There are various types of electronic devices that are wearable on the human body, which are available on the market or disclosed in patent sources. They may be classified by a common feature, particularly, they may comprise two parts, each of which is wearable on different parts of the body, where the first (executive) part is provided in the form of a display or a headphone and is disposed on the user's head, and the second (equipment base) part is wearable on the user's neck and shoulders; both parts are connected to each other with signal and power wires. When the equipment base part for the spectacle frame containing a display or headphones is not disposed on the user's head but is connected to the destination of the signal (the display or headphones) by a flexible joint, then both these device types may be classified by a common feature of the engineering problem to be solved, which feature is providing effective connection for an electronic device being wearable on the user's body and comprising two parts, while the first part is disposed on the user's head contains a display and/or headphones, and the second part is disposed on the user's neck and shoulders contains an equipment base for the first part.
Any connections like those mentioned above comprise movable and fixed parts (being movable or fixed in relation to other parts of the device or in relation to the human body part on which they are disposed). Reducing a length of the movable parts' wires, placing the movable parts on a plane, making the fixed parts adjacent to the human body, and affixing the fixed parts by means of tension allow reducing wire sag and correspondingly reducing risk of the wires being caught on. Moreover, this allows permanent wearing the device in a stand-by position when the spectacles with the display have been taken off, and improves an ability to wind the wires.
Disposition of the equipment base on the user's neck and shoulders provides a far wider scope of equipment and energy means for providing longer and better operation of the display. Additionally, it allows placing two displays (a separate display in front of each eye), thus providing stereoscopic effect owing to a binocular nature of human vision, and reducing risk of strabismus development being actual in the case when a display for only one eye is used.
When analyzing the prior art, one should consider all types of devices having flexible connection between the executive part (a display or headphones) being wearable on the human head, and the equipment base being wearable on any body part different from the head. Such devices include spectacles having displays; neck sets; players; telephones connected by wire to headphones placed in the ears, while the display and headphones are often narrowly spaced from each other in operational state, and they may be mounted on the same spectacle frame wearable on the head.
A device in the form of spectacles having a display located in front of one eye of the bearer is known (U.S. Pat. D660,341 S published on May 22, 2012), where an equipment base comprising power sources is mounted on the spectacle frame. This solution increases the spectacle frame weight, worsens appearance of the user and limits autonomous operating time of the device, since it is difficult to mount the equipment base and power source necessary for a considerably long autonomous operation of the device, on the spectacle frame. Moreover, it may be impossible to mount required equipment base on the spectacle frame, and this in turn impedes using two displays (a separate display in front of each eye), thus possibly causing strabismus and preventing use of the stereoscopic base of binocular vision for forming a stereoscopic image.
A device (U.S. Pat. No. 8,038,292 B2, published on Oct. 18, 2011), is known wherein a cable connecting an optical element placed in front of the user's eyes to its equipment, and a power base hangs from the back surface of a lateral temple of the spectacles. The wire hanging from the head worsens appearance, impedes the head rotation and tends to tangle.
An electronic device Epson Moverio BT-200 in the form of spectacles is known, having two displays in front of user's eyes. Its limitations are similar to the limitations of the above-mentioned device, since this device also has one cable hanging from the front part of a spectacle temple.
Known stereo headsets of a necklace, collar or neck loop type have predominantly two types of connection between earphones and the neck loop: headsets with two side nodes, in which earphone cords are connected with the neck loop and not connected between themselves, and headsets with a single back node, in which earphone cords are connected to each other and to the neck loop in the single node.
A conventional headset comprises earphones that are connected through cords to a supporting structure, which accommodates a signal transceiver and is connected to a necklace (neck loop) (See U.S. Pat. No. 7,416,099 B2, publ. 26.08.2008).
The headset comprises long unsecured sections of cords connecting the earphones with the neck loop, because the additional length is needed when the user rotates and moves the head relative to the torso. The headset has two nodes and the length of the movable portion of the cords in the headset is more than 19 cm. The cords hang freely along the entire length thereof in the air over the body surface, so they are slack and may tangle and cling to surrounding objects. In addition, the headset is difficult to wear under clothing, in both operational and non-operational state, i.e. when the earphones are taken off.
An earphone storage structure comprises a necklace, two fasteners formed in the two ends of the necklace, and stoppers (See U.S. Pat. No. 7,936,895 B2, publ. 03.05.2011). The size of the fasteners is less than the size of the stoppers and the size of the earphones, therefore, the earphones may be pulled out when they are not used. The stoppers are actually connection nodes, and this device relates to headsets with two side nodes. The earphone storage structure has the same limitations as the previous device: cords are slacking, and the structure is difficult to wear under clothing and to manage it over clothing.
A lanyard for a portable electronic device (See U.S. Pat. No. 7,650,007 B2, published 19 Jan. 2010) comprises two side connection nodes and allows adjusting the length of earphone cords, but the lanyard does not eliminate sagging of the cords in an operational state.
In a necklace-type audio device (See WO 2012/015257 A1, publ. 02.02.2012), earphone cables form a neck loop when they are attached at the ends to a jack disposed on the user's chest, and crossed through two rings disposed in the back of the necklace (neck loop), the rings being adapted to adjust the length of the neck loop and earphone cables. In this device, the length of the cords connecting an earphone to the necklace (neck loop) is even longer than in necklace-type headsets with two side nodes; this fact contributes to slacking of the cords, and peculiarities of adjusting the lengths of cords in the headset eliminates the possibility of wearing it under clothes.
Therefore, the conventional devices, first, comprise excessively long unsecured sections of cords that connect the head part of a device or a headset with a neck loop (in headsets with a single node the length of freely hanging cords is about 19 cm, and in headsets with two side units it is about 25 cm) and, second, unsecured sections of cords in the conventional devices do not fit to the body surface. The cord slack cannot be fully removed without restricting the freedom of movement of the user's head. Therefore, when the devices are used the cords either slack, tangle and cling to surrounding objects, or restrict the freedom of movement.
Therefore, no constant wear device has been designed up until the present moment, which would have a small total length of freely hanging cords snuggly fitted to the body and creating no obstacles to movements of the head. Provision of such a device would improve the ease of use, secure fixation to the user's body, and prevent failures caused by the cords clinging to surrounding objects.
Generally, the wire sag depends on the following factors:
(a) the length of the movable part of the wires between fixed points; in all known spectacles with displays using a wire for connecting to the equipment base that is wearable on any human body part different from the head, and in all neck sets also using a wire between the neck loop and the headphones located in the auricles, this length corresponds to the length of the wire between the headphone (or the spectacle frame in the case of spectacles having displays) and the neck loop; thus, the shorter the movable part of the wires, the less the wire sag is,
(b) tension of the wire,
(c) degree of gap of the wire being adjacent to the human body, and
(d) position of the wires; wires disposed on a plane do not sag, unlike wires hanging in the air or disposed over natural valleys of the user's body.
The action of the above factors on the example of the known devices and the device according to the invention illustrated in the drawings and will be explained below.
Further, explanation of reasons is provided for proposed design of a device being wearable on the human body, the device comprising two parts, one part being wearable on the user's head and possibly including a display and/or headphone(s), and the other part which is an equipment base being wearable on the user's neck, shoulders and chest, and a flexible connection between these two parts.